Verner's Pride eBook

“Lionel! I can’t find my gold combs!”
exclaimed Sibylla, coming from the dressing-room,
with a face of consternation. “They are
not in the dressing-case. How am I to know which
box Benoite has put them in?”

“Never mind looking for the combs now,”
he answered. “You will have time to search
for things to-morrow. Your hair looks nice without
combs. I think nicer than with them.”

“But I wanted to wear them,” she fractiously
answered. “It is all your fault! You
should not have forced me to discharge Benoite.”

Did she wish him to look for the gold combs?
Lionel did not take the hint. Leaving her in
the hands of Catherine, he quitted the room.

CHAPTER LXXI.

UNPREMEDITATED WORDS.

Lucy was in the drawing-room alone when Lionel entered
it. “Lady Verner,” she said to him,
“has stepped out to speak to Jan.”

“Lucy, I find that our coming here has turned
you out of your room,” he gravely said.
“I should earnestly have protested against it,
had I known what was going to be done.”

“Should you?” said she, shaking her head
quite saucily. “We should not have listened
to you.”

“We! Whom does the ‘we’ include?”

“Myself and Decima. We planned everything.
I like the room I have now, quite as much as that.
It is the room at the end, opposite the one Mrs. Verner
is to have for her sitting-room.”

“The sitting-room again! What shall you
and Decima do without it?” exclaimed Lionel,
looking as he felt—­vexed.

“If we never have anything worse to put up with
than the loss of a sitting-room that was nearly superfluous,
we shall not grieve,” answered Lucy, with a
smile. “How did we do without it before—­when
you were getting better from that long illness?
We had to do without it then.”

“I think not, Lucy. So far as my
memory serves me, you were sitting in it a great portion
of your time—­cheering me. I have not
forgotten it, if you have.”

Neither had she—­by her heightened colour.

“I mean that we had to do without it for our
own purposes, our drawings and our work. It is
but a little matter, after all. I wish we could
do more for you and Mrs. Verner. I wish,”
she added, her voice betraying her emotion, “that
we could have prevented your being turned from Verner’s
Pride.”

“Ay,” he said, speaking with affected
carelessness, and turning about an ornament in his
fingers, which he had taken from the mantel-piece,
“it is not an every-day calamity.”

“What shall you do?” asked Lucy, going
a little nearer to him, and dropping her voice to
a tone of confidence.

“Do? In what way, Lucy?”

“Shall you be content to live on here with Lady
Verner? Not seeking to retrieve your—­your
position in any way?”

“My living on here, Lucy, will be out of the
question. That would never do, for more reasons
than one.”